Game Review: Hektik (Commodore 16 and Plus/4, Mastertronic)

The original Commodore 64 version of Hektik was released in 1984, and some two years later, the original programmer Martin Ellis went back to the game and coded the Commodore 16 and Plus/4 conversion himself.  Of course, like the original, it is a clone of the arcade game Space Panic, and so if you have played the arcade version, you will know what to expect from this game, and indeed its elder Commodore 64 brother.

Hunter Killer

The game loads up with a simple title screen with a decent sized Hektik logo.  It does not show you the monsters on the title screen, but they are similar in behaviour but just a different colour for one of them.  The red one is the chaser, this takes a fall of one platform level to kill.  The green one is more difficult – as the hunter, this takes a fall of two platform levels. On this version there is a colour change for the killer, which is in blue, and which takes a fall of three platform levels to destroy.

Platform Paradoxes

Once you press space to start the game, you are straight into it – no little introductory jingle here.  On level one like the Commodore 64 version, it is three red monsters, with platforms made of bricks and ladders to climb up or down.  You can move at a good speed, albeit less quickly in this version, to avoid the monsters’ movement, and you can only dig where the brick platform is wide enough for you to create a hole in.  Moving left or right moves along the platform, and up and down climbs and descends the ladder as needed. To dig the hole, you press down and fire, and this needs to happen three times for the hole to be fully dug.  You can also re-fill the hole in by pressing up and fire if you need to make a quick move away from a monster coming at you from the other side.  You can conveniently fall down the hole yourself to escape, which can be useful.

Dig, Lazarus, Dig!

Once one of the monsters drops into the hole you have created, you can then use up and fire to use the spade to push down the monster.  It takes three of those for the monster to drop down the hole, and you have a limited time to push them down before they come back out – and from level two onwards, much angrier than before.  So, they can mutate into green and then blue if you are not careful.  You do need to keep an eye on the oxygen meter too – if this runs out, you lose a life, so acts like a timer to complete the level.  You get a nice bonus at the end of the level for any oxygen left, which helps boost your score considerably if you are fast enough.

We Dig Renegade Soundwave and AC/DC

The second level has five red monsters, the third has two red and one green, and the fourth has three red, a green, and a blue.  Again, like the Commodore 64 version, there are some randomised elements where the bricks and ladders are which can lead to some frustration, especially as it is not always easy to line up a series of holes to dig where you need to allow the monsters to fall through two or three levels.  One other noticeable change here though is the fact that sometimes the monsters are randomised a little too close to yourself, and makes that hard to avoid them initially.

One other difference is that when heading up a ladder, if the monster is close to the ladder underneath, sometimes it can get you from there and you lose a life.  It seems a little tighter on this than the Commodore 64 version, and it is something to get used to if you have played that version first.  The difficulty level is still overall very fair though and I was able to get to the fifth level with a few plays, and master the art of dropping one monster onto another to reduce their number, with a gorgeous arcade-like sound effect when you do, so that is a positive.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in Hektik are functional, but at least well drawn.  The monsters have their own little characteristic, and having the third one in blue differentiates them nicely.  They also move smoothly up and down the ladders, without a big square around them, and considering there are no hardware sprites on this machine, it does look impressive.  There are little jingles for level complete and game over, and some functional sound effects, although the sound effect when you kill a monster deserves a mention for really sounding spot on. It also gives you immense satisfaction when doing multiple kills too.

Final Thoughts

Hektik certainly does not disguise that it is a clone of Space Panic.  Furthermore, as an arcade platform game and seeing other not so well-made titles in this machine such as Fury, Hektik improves on those hugely on this machine.  It is just as playable as the Commodore 64 version, with technical merit for the movement on the monsters on the ladder emulating hardware sprites, and although your main character moves a little slower, it does not detract from the playability whatsoever.  There are still some randomisation issues with the platforms and ladders on occasion, and you can get trapped quicker on a ladder, but it is compensated well by a fair difficulty level and gives you that one more go factor.  An excellent conversion all round.

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